


The Monsters Behind His Eyes.

by darksquall, lanapanda



Category: Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Crying, Fill, M/M, Nightmares, Science Boyfriends, Science Bros, avengers kink meme, kink meme prompt, request fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-05
Updated: 2012-11-05
Packaged: 2017-11-18 02:16:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/555777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darksquall/pseuds/darksquall, https://archiveofourown.org/users/lanapanda/pseuds/lanapanda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Response to a prompt on the Avengers Kink Meme ( http://avengerkink.livejournal.com/9218.html?thread=20963586#t20963586 ) for Tony bawling. Bruce and Tony are together, in love. Tony's been hiding the bad dreams from everyone, not just Bruce. Unfortunately, he can't hide them anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Monsters Behind His Eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> Kink meme prompt - 
> 
> http://avengerkink.livejournal.com/9218.html?thread=20963586#t20963586
> 
> From being tortured in Afghanistan to thinking he was going to die in Iron Man 2, Tony's been through a shit-ton of things. It seemed like he never really got a chance to just let go and I just want to see him crying his eyes out.
> 
> Preferably into Bruce's shoulder, as Bruce comforts him.
> 
> Established relationship, please!
> 
>  
> 
> With many many thanks to Lanapanda for being my Tony, my beta and trying to train me out of my Britishisms. 
> 
> NOTE: I prefer the comics background for Bruce Banner rather than the movie background, hopefully I have managed to meld Comics Bruce with Avengers Bruce. 
> 
> Disclaimer: The characters and places contained herein do not belong to me and I am making no money from this.

_In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present._  
Francis Bacon

 

It was all my fault.

I fell for Tony hard and fast. Finding someone who understood the way I thought, the way I felt made it hard not to. He was bright and beautiful and always there. He made sure I wouldn’t be, or feel, alone anymore. He made sure I knew I was safe. He did it all with his usual smile and showmanship, and I never quite got around to asking why the smile didn’t always reach his eyes.

I moved into the tower. We kept it… not so much quiet, but we did keep it to ourselves at first. Neither of us had had a male lover before, and we had boundaries to deal with and a few ridiculous mental blocks to overcome (I suspect they were easier for me with medical experience than they ever were for Tony, but I’m willing to be wrong on that count) but it was like coming home. Finding someone who understood my thought processes, finding someone who I could spar with mentally just as Natasha and Clint would work out together was… incredible.

That was how I found myself completely in love with a man.

We held hands at the lab bench and everything.

Tony never slept much. Even less than me thanks to that reactor, but when he started flagging I knew to try and steer him to bed. Or a couch. Somewhere he could be comfortable. Most of the time our sleep schedules matched up pretty well – I only needed four hours a night to tell the truth. More was nice, but unnecessary unless we’d gone through some pretty strenuous activities, and I was still trying to get out of the habit of waking up at every little noise so some nights were better than others. Not to mention more dangerous monsters than the Hulk lurked in my subconscious. Ones that really shouldn’t be let out to play and they had a habit of visiting me any time I closed my eyes.

One night, I shooed Tony to bed. I promised I’d be right in, I just had to set up one more test case on our latest venture, and I’d be in to rest with him. It took longer than I expected because the results from the previous test case were skewed and I had to analyse some of the results more than I’d first thought, so it must have been an hour and a half or so before I finally headed for the bedroom.

Loud noises don’t scare me. They don’t make me lose control or run away, or worse. When I hear them from my lover’s bedroom however, all bets are off.

I heard a crash – something hit the floor – and for a moment I wondered if someone had managed to bypass security somehow and get into the bedroom, but I was already running and when I reached the bedroom door, he was alone.

Tony was alone. My heart was thundering in my ears and the edges of my vision were just starting to go green… but he was alone. The clock, his phone, his tablet and a pile of paperwork he’d been reading through in bed that morning had been on the bedside table when I’d last seen them, now they were scattered on the floor and Tony was desperately trying to untangle himself from the white cotton sheets.

I breathed his name and went to his side. The green faded, but my other persona didn’t calm down entirely – he could scent fear. Tony’s fear. In the time we’d been together, I don’t think I’d ever known Tony to be afraid. He was calm, cool under pressure, or downright snarky. He wasn’t a man who knew fear. “Tony?”

He made an exasperated sound and finally kicked off the sheets, lurching violently out of bed and towards the bar. He didn’t look at me as he grabbed the closest glass and poured himself a more than healthy measure of scotch. Neat. That wasn’t a good sign. He leant heavily against the bar, taking a long drink. He coughed, rubbed his face and finally looked at me long enough to meet my eyes.

Tony knew I didn’t like alcohol. That wasn’t his fault, and I knew he wasn’t a violent drunk but some things lingered. Some things lasted a lifetime whether I should know better or not. I’d never told him to stop, I didn’t want to be the one to ask for changes like that, but he’d cut down for me at least. He didn’t drink nearly as much as he had when we’d first started sleeping together. The bar in the bedroom – not nearly as large or extensive a collection as the one in the main living room – was limited to a few dozen of his favourite brands. Enough to impress without being overly ostentatious. I always slept with my back to it because I hated to wake up and see it there.

“Bad dream?” I asked, trying to make it sound nonchalant and easy. Like it was just a normal, everyday thing. As though we weren’t the kind of men who would never quite manage to outrun those bad dreams. The one place our demons could catch up with us was while we were sleeping. I don’t think I’d had a bad one since we’d started sleeping together. My mind was too full of the projects and work, and Tony Stark’s easy smile and haunted eyes to let those things linger.

Tony grunted, lowering his eyes again. The knuckles of the hand that clutched the glass were painfully white. I’d never seen him have a nightmare before but somehow I didn’t ever want to see it again, not my lover, my Tony. Not the man who was so _bright_ and together. It somehow wasn’t quite him – at least, not the him he’d let me see so far.

“I’ll make some tea,” I said, walking to him and settling my hand on his shoulder. He tensed up under my hand; I could feel the muscles move. I’d seen him work to earn those muscles, seen him hammering in the fabrication shop to repair one of the cars. There was more than a little thrill creeping into the back of my mind at feeling his strength underneath my hand. But Tony knew what I meant by offering tea – stop the alcohol. I could feel the wall being thrown up between the two of us already, he was shutting himself off and away and I really disliked seeing that from the other side more than I ever thought possible. I didn’t back down though. I wasn’t going to let him get away from me.

He shook his head, reaching for the bottle again but he didn’t shrug me off. “I don’t want tea. We can do tea tomorrow.”

“Tell me why you want it?” I asked, trying to keep my voice as gentle as possible. 

He opened his mouth to speak, his body language screaming sarcastic comment incoming but when his gaze met mine he stopped. Tony could put on a good show, sometimes so good even I could start to believe it, but not this time for me. There it was again, Tony’s eyes giving him away. Tony’s eyes screaming for someone to listen. “Force of habit,” he admitted softly.

I couldn’t help myself – I had to touch him so I reached up to brush my fingers against his cheek. He needed to shave, his cheeks were rough with stubble, but his skin was warm against my fingertips. _‘Force of habit,’_ he’d said… so he had these often enough to have a coping mechanism. He was reaching for his comfort and I was just getting to see the aftermath of perhaps years of pain and vulnerability. Okay. If he had a coping mechanism I could work with that. “What else do you do when you have them?”

He tensed. Then he relaxed. The confusion swept over his features in a heartbeat. “Work…” he whispered, his eyes flickering closed as he leaned towards my hand, letting me cup his cheek properly. His breath hitched, just a little, his free hand flexed into a fist at his side. He was lost and I’d found him “I just… work.”

“Okay,” I stroked his cheek again and even brushed my thumb over his lips. “Get a bottle of whatever you usually drink, _and_ a mixer, and two glasses. Meet me in the den.”

“Bruce, you know you don’t have to,” he said, even as I let go of him.

No, I didn’t. I didn’t have to do anything, but I was damned if I was going to let him drink himself into oblivion without someone to take care of him. Tony had made sure I wasn’t alone any more, and I wanted to make sure he wasn’t either. Those things should have come hand in hand, but I knew better than to assume and let him work himself into a darker place.

“You know how terrible I am at doing the things I _have_ to do,” I shrugged, staying right there at this side. Which was mostly true. If it came to something where the fate of the world rested on my knowledge and a pair of much larger green shoulders, I’d been known to step up to the plate when it was something I _had_ to do. It was only when people like Ross were telling me what to do that I had a sudden crisis in that regard. “Much better when it’s something I want to do.”

He finally set the glass down, running a hand through his hair slowly, his fingers tangling at the shorter hair at the back of his head and tugging it hard. His eyes didn’t need to scream at me when he did that – it was his tell. When Tony is stressed and can’t think, he runs his hand through his hair, tugs it and glances around. Looking for something to focus on; a feat which he found difficult even at the best of times, let alone when he was trying to ground himself after a traumatic experience. Finally he settled on what I imagine must have been the easiest thing in that moment -- the drinks. “I… Okay. Whiskey and coke, okay?”

I slid my hand along his arm lightly, pausing just long enough to squeeze his hand. Something to help him focus, something to let him gather his thoughts and center himself again. “Whatever you want to drink is fine with me. Go on. Shoo.”

Tony kept watching me for a minute or two before he finally shook his head and picked up a bottle, heading out. He glanced at me twice more before he finally left the room. I spent a little time picking up the things he’d knocked off the nightstand and found his tablet and a blanket. Red, of course, with little gold stitches around the edge – he really needed to wear red more outside of the suit. With everything back as it should, I headed for the den. Tony turned up, minutes after me, hovering in the door of a room in his own apartment as though he needed permission to come in.

Finally he sidled in as though he hadn’t hesitated at all, parking himself on the couch and setting the bottles on the coffee table. I found my space right next to him, close enough to share both the blanket and the tablet.

He poured two drinks. I pretended not to notice that his was twice as strong as mine as I took the glass and slid an arm around him. I pulled up our list of test cases for him – visual distraction, mental noise. Something to focus on besides the glass in his hand. “I’m going to match you. Drink for drink.”

“Bruce,” he paused, the glass already halfway to his lips. I think he was actually afraid for a moment that I’d hurt myself. I’d never been drunk enough to see if I had a temper like my father – I’d never had more than a few beers really – enough to make me feel light headed but no more. “You can’t.”

“Why not?”

Tony rarely panicked. I could see the edges of it in his eyes now though. “Because you don’t drink nearly enough, or as often as you’d need to, to keep up.”

“Neither do you anymore, Tony.”

“Promise me you’ll stop when I ask you to.”

I looked at him. I met his eyes, too dark, too wide. Not afraid of my losing control – he trusted me far too much for that – but afraid of me getting hurt and it being his fault. Even if logic would dictate that it was my own damn fault for trying to match him. I’d seen Tony interact with his friends and talk to them, I’d seen him posture and pretend around people who should have been able to read him like an open book. Yet, no one ever had. Everyone believed the spiel and no one cared enough to call him on his bullshit. They didn’t see him open and needy like this. I was the only one who’d managed to see more of Tony than the facade he offered out to the general public and even his friends. “Okay, I promise.”

He looked away from me and down at the tablet, dragging a hand through his hair again, trying to smooth it from the odd angles he’d dragged it into when he’d been trying to fight off the panic earlier. Taking a deep breath, he forced a fake smile.. “What are we working on?”

Skimming through our projects, I pulled up one of the easier but still interesting things we’d been working on, analysing some of the Chitauri tech that Fury wasn’t quite aware had been left behind. SHIELD had managed to gather up almost all of it, but Tony – being Tony – had kept a little to work on and examine. We both knew that SHIELD would be doing exactly the same thing, even if they hadn’t mentioned anything to their consultant, so really it was just a matter of staying ahead of the game. “We’ve got some results back from the computer simulations on this project, we could review those?”

“Sure,” he took a long pull from his drink, as though I wasn’t going to notice that. “We can do that.”

I pulled up the results, spreading the reports, figures and graphs out with my little finger. Having an arm around him made it a little more awkward to work, but the tablets were sensitive enough that I could hold my drink and work the display with one hand. I wondered sometimes if that was deliberate. “Do you often have bad dreams like that?”

“Not… anymore. You’d know if I left the bed.”

It was my fault. I should have gone to bed with him when I’d said. “Sorry I was so late coming to bed.” I brushed my lips against his temple in apology, and he shuddered, closing his eyes tightly.

Tony waved the hand with the drink dismissively, the coke fizzed a little louder at being agitated and almost slopped over the side of the glass a few times. “You had things to do, it’s nothing to apologise for.”

“It could have waited until morning.”

He shook his head vehemently. “No, that would have tweaked the results. Can’t do that. I understand, Bruce, I do.”

“Tony. Open your eyes,” I wasn’t asking, I wasn’t giving him a choice – I wanted him to look at me, I wanted him to stop lingering in whatever thought was making him so tense and I wanted him to know one thing. When he finally looked up at me he was smiling the false smile, the ‘everything will be fine’ smile. It still didn’t reach his eyes, he couldn’t fool me. “You’re more important to me. I could have run the dataset tomorrow from scratch.”

“And lost a lot of time in the bargain,” he shook his head again, pressed a kiss to my temple and knocked back what was left of his drink before leaning forward to pour himself another. “It’s okay; I’m not going to put you through this again.”

I hated that he thought that was a problem. Was it that he thought that I didn’t want to help him? Or did he just hate to be vulnerable in front of me? I looked at him, and knocked back the drink in one go. It burnt, the whiskey strong enough that I felt it all the way down. He was right, I didn’t drink often enough to do this, but if he was going to do this to himself, I was going to be right there with him. “Pour me another,” I said, holding out the glass to him.

I’d never seen Tony flinch like he did. So few people recoiled from me, really, and seeing Tony do that even if it wasn’t me he was pulling away from, hurt. “Bruce. Don’t do this. Why would you do this?”

“You shouldn’t have to drink alone right now.” Without the glass, it was easier to manipulate the results, projecting a model of the first weapon we’d examined together. “Will you tell me what you dreamed about?”

“You drank – I’m not alone. I just… sometimes my mind goes back to dark places better left behind.”

Oh, of course. The events that had left that soft blue glow lurking behind his tee-shirts. Part of me felt bad for not knowing right away, but we both had so many things to regret and have nightmares about that it was hard to keep track sometimes. “Right. Sorry. Do you feel up to trying to go back to sleep?”

He shook his head, handing me another drink and leaning against me again with his own. “Not yet.” He paused, then sighed and shook his head again. “No one’s ever asked me about the dreams before. I don’t know how to put this into words without sounding like an idiot.”

I thought of my own dreams. Haunted by the accident, by the monster I could become at any given moment, and by another monster from years before. Even dead, some things still lingered, some people still haunted me. I wondered if I’d ever get over the control those ghosts had on me sometimes. “I know you’re far from being an idiot. If you want to try and put this into words.”

Tony was quiet. Very quiet, for him. He started pulling up some of the results and making notes on what to run next, where to look and how to disassemble our first little sample. I thought for a while that he wasn’t going to answer… then he rested his head on my shoulder and sighed softly. “It’s not even dreams so much. It’s that, when I wake up, it’s like I’m right back there with all the sand and the blood and the sick feeling of knowing I was dying even when I got back here and the palladium was poisoning me and… it’s too much.”

The words had come out all in a rush. He hid any more tells, any more stress outlets in a small sip of his drink. Tortured, injured, poisoned by the very thing saving his life – I’d read his file of course when he’d given me permission and he’d filled in a few blanks and sparse points with glaring detail and a boyish grin. Everything was a joke to Tony Stark sooner or later. That was part of why no one listened to him. Even when he was trying to explain that he was dying.

“It makes sense to me, Tony,” I murmured, resting my cheek against his hair. He was always warm, thanks to the arc reactor. It kicked Tony’s metabolism higher and I could hear the hum of that reactor working constantly when I was this close to him. He was even warmer than I was, which was saying something given the radiation running through my veins. The warmth, the hum, they were just some of the reasons he could make me feel safe and wanted just by curling against my back when he came to bed after me. I hated that apparently I couldn’t do the same for him. “You don’t sound like an idiot in the slightest.”

“Then you understand why I need this,” he gestured with the glass and took another sip. Drinking more slowly now. I suspected he was hoping I wouldn’t keep it up if he slowed down.

Intellectually, I understood. Emotionally it was still hard going to try and convince myself that he needed those drinks. He knew a little of my darkest days, a little of why drinking to excess made my stomach churn and made me pull away from him sometimes despite my best efforts not to. He’d actually cut down for me, stopped drinking quite so much. I hadn’t even asked him to do that. “Do you drink to feel numb?”

“Right now, I’m drinking to get the taste of blood and sand out of my mouth.”

“Look up at me?”

Tony did, reluctantly. “This is… probably the wrong kind of conversation to have. I’m sorry.”

I wanted him to stop worrying, and I wanted to prove that he didn’t taste like blood and sand, so I kissed him. He pulled away again, tears in his eyes. I’d fucked up. Pushed him too hard and too fast into things that were probably better left for the cold light of morning when reality was back in control and the night didn’t make the shadows seem quite so deep and dark. “Sorry,” I whispered.

“Please don’t be… please.”

“Tony, talk to me.”

“I love you. I feel like I’m… I just don’t want you to see me like this. I was always alone when this happened before. No one else knows or noticed.”

I took the tablet from him and leaned forward just enough to set it on the table. “I don’t want to let you go while you’re like this. So, a compromise.” I let him finish his drink and then coaxed his head back down onto my shoulder, where he had been before. I pulled the blanket a little higher and rested my cheek against his hair. “I can’t see your face like this and I can still hold you.”

He turned towards me, wrapping both arms around me and holding onto me for dear life. His voice was soft but his words were urgent. “I tried, too. Wasn’t man enough to get a gun, but the race in Monaco… I knew I was dying when I took over the drive. I knew I didn’t have a clue about driving a race car. Sometimes that… gets all tangled up in my head with the shrapnel from the bomb that nearly killed me the first time.”

“It’s not about being man enough or not to get a gun, Tony. Believe me,” I wanted to do something to comfort him but everything felt shallow and hollow. I just held him for the moment, hoping that would somehow help him.

“I just wanted the pain to stop. But that never stops…” he gave a humourless laugh and shook his head. “I’m about to kind of fall apart here. Might want to give me ten, twenty minutes to pull it together.”

 _I just wanted the pain to stop._ That one hit a lot closer to home than I was entirely willing to admit to, bringing back memories of the weight of the gun in my hand, the sting of the cold air on my cheeks and that all encompassing despair and loss that weighed on me incessantly. “Take all the time you want,” I rubbed his back and just held him. “But you’re not moving, and neither am I.”

“I can’t… Bruce, Please.” He sounded so desperate and lost. So alone even if he was curled up against me and I felt helpless. I wanted him to know everything was okay. “You’re the only one, the only one who could ever tell… please don’t make me lose you because I can’t keep smiling right now. Ten minutes, I swear. I’ll be fine in ten minutes and we can go to bed and pretend this never happened.”

“Tony…” I took a shuddering breath. I couldn’t figure out what to say. I tried half a dozen times before I finally figured out what I wanted him to know. Perhaps what he needed to know as well. “You won’t lose me. It’s okay, just… let go.”

Then Tony Stark, billionaire, genius, playboy philanthropist and quite possibly the loneliest man in the world broke down and cried against my neck. He tried to keep quiet, just the occasional sob fluttering out along with a flood of tears. I couldn’t say anything, I just let him get it out, cry his heart out. I didn’t know what to say – if there was anything at all - so I just rubbed his back, held him, made sure that at last _someone_ was there for him when he really needed them.

It might have been fifteen minutes before he finally said something. “Sorry,” his voice was practically a whisper and even after all that, he was apologising for being upset, and scared, and everything else he was feeling? How could I make him understand that it wasn’t a problem? That he should never have had to face such things alone.

“Shh. Do you feel better now?”

“Will you be upset if I don’t?”

I really wanted nothing more than to look him in the eye and let him see how serious I was. I wanted to hold onto him, and whisper how much I loved him, tell him that it was all going to be fine and I’d protect him. This wasn’t the time – I needed him to stop hiding these things from me. “No, love. I’m not going to get upset with you.”

“Then…” he took hold of my shirt like a kid, balling his fist up in the fabric and hanging onto it for dear life. “A little. More embarrassed that I’m putting you through this.”

“Because talking to your lover is so much more embarrassing than confessing on a flying fortress to a bunch of super heroes and spies?” I was teasing. Trying to be teasing, anyway, it was hard to find comfort in any of this. It was the only way I could think of to let Tony know that he wasn’t alone. I couldn’t pretend to know what he’d gone through, even if I had a better idea than most, or offer anything more than comfort and understanding.

“That wasn’t you. That was Loki’s pimp cane talking, but it made me want to hold you, right then.”

I felt the tension flood through his body as he processed what he’d said. As he realised that we had yet another thing in common and that he wasn’t alone in this. Not anymore. “You mean like this?” I suggested, pretending I hadn’t noticed it.

His voice was quiet. Too quiet to really be Tony. “Yeah, a lot like this.”

“Tony, I don’t want to pretend this never happened.”

“Tell me what you do want?”

I kissed his hair, going back to rubbing his back, trying to comfort him. I just wanted what I’d always wanted. “All of you, Tony. Even the parts that no one else sees.”

He finally looked up at me. His wide brown eyes were rimmed with red but he still looked so damn hopeful that it almost hurt. “Let’s… take a day off.”

I had been with Tony long enough that I knew that ‘taking a day off’ really meant that he needed time to work through things –he needed time to breathe and probably to deal with the fact I’d witnessed that. We’d taken a few days off in the first weeks of our relationship to get over some things too, so this was familiar territory. “Okay. Can I kiss you know?”

“Please?”

I kissed him just as softly, just as gently as I ever had. I wanted him to know that nothing had changed between us. I just knew a little more about him now that the moment had passed, but it would never change anything between the two of us. His fingers tangled in my hair, and he opened up to me, letting me taste him slowly, explore his mouth and make absolutely sure that he didn’t doubt how much I wanted him or that my next statement was true. “No blood or sand. Just you… and a little whiskey.”

“Just you, and a little coke,” he smiled at me and closed his eyes again, resting his cheek against my shoulder. “Kind of sweet and smooth.”

I turned us around and leaned back on the couch, pulling him with me so he could rest. “No need to move, right?” I asked, already pulling off my glasses and setting them on the table with what was left of our drinks and the tablet.

“Think you can sleep out here, Bruce?” Tony asked, but he was already curling against me, resting his head on my chest right over my heart.

“If you’re here, yeah.” Tony still made me feel safe in ways that no one else ever had.

He gave a soft, contented sigh and nuzzled against my chest. I was wearing one of his t-shirts again. I never had gotten around to adding to my wardrobe after I’d moved in with him. Sure, I had my everyday stuff, but when it came to something more casual, I ended up borrowing Tony’s t-shirts more often than not. “Not going anywhere. Not tonight. Not ever.”

“Just the way I want it.”

“Thanks for… seeing me through,” he smiled, and though I can’t see much up close without my glasses, I could definitely see that much.

“Anytime. Everytime.”

Tony gave a soft, shuddery sigh and snuggled down, pulling the blanket up almost level with his eyes. He must have exhausted himself crying because he was out in literally minutes, breathing softly. I tucked the blanket around him, making sure he’d be plenty warm enough, and tangled my fingers in his hair. Tony had trusted me, welcomed me in ways that the team hadn’t. Tony had never been scared of me – he had enough monsters behind his eyes to understand me.

I swore to myself I’d learn how to protect him from those monsters, no matter what.


End file.
